It’s book central here at Backwoods Horror today it’d seem. I’ve had a copy of both of Tom Savini’s amazing GRANDE ILLUSIONS books for some time (one signed by the man himself), having found them in a box of books donated to the library I was working in at the time. You can imagine the freak-out that followed for yourselves. It was like finding buried treasure. On the inside cover of both, it said that the books were published by Morris Costumes specifically for the costume trade and have been, for the longest time, difficult to get ones claws on. It’s always been one of the high points of my collection. Now, it would seem, the rest of you finally get your chance to check out these amazing books in a re-release that combines both books into one mighty tome you’d be proud to have on your horror shelves.

Few images in film are as startling as that moment in “Alien” when the baby chestburster comes crawling out of of John Hurt’s torso in a spray of gore. It was so gripping, the slimy little parasite was brought back for the sequel, “Aliens.” Even better, it was created without the assistance of CGI.

A video shared by the Stan Winston School of Character Arts lets us all in on how that nasty little surprise was created. The video is narrated by Stephen Norrington, the special-effects wiz who built the device. He started with dental acrylic poured into a mold of the monster, cut it into pieces using a bandsaw, and held it all together with a cable-housing spine.